Everyone knows the jury’s still out on 3DTV.
Nielsen’s latest scrutiny into the realm yielded a sort of shrug. Folks can’t
text in shutter glasses, at least until someone comes up with 2D/3D bifocals.
Which they will on the march to glasses-free 3DTV. In the meantime, the mobile
media community will come to own 3D.

It may at first blush seem counterintuitive that 3D would be desirable or even discernible
on mini screens. Ordinary 2D video is having a hard enough time on cell phones.
The PR clamor enveloping mobile video is mostly PR clamor.

Mobile video usage doesn’t touch TV viewing, which is nearly universal. It lags
online viewing, done by about two-thirds of ’Net-connected households,
according to Nielsen’s latest global consumption report. Around 11 percent tune
into TV content on cell phones, which have had video ability nearly as long as
computers.

In the U.S. alone, roughly 7 percent of cell phone subscribers use them to watch
video. Yet the mobile platform holds the greatest potential for 3D because
applications are not limited to video. The Astonishing Tribe of Sweden
elegantly illustrates.

The Astonishing Tribe, aka TAT,
specializes in mobile user interfaces. Developing UIs is a promising field in
that mobile device types are booming, from 4G phones to tablet computers and
iterations between. Also, device makers have dictated UIs since Atari released its
first PC, and they’re not especially intuitive. The TAT folks approach UIs as users. They develop from the point of
view of the rest of us.

This week, the Tribe published a white
paper on integrating 3D presentation in 2D mobile UIs in a way that blows
past today’s most common visual applications.

“Typically the palette of ‘3D techniques’ has been comprised visualizations of
lightning, shadows, focus, depth, camera angles and similar,” the paper states.
“We conceive that 3D is more than 3D graphics. We understand ‘3D’ in user
interfaces as a paradigm where the appearance of the interface displays
three-dimensional or real world qualities.”

TAT actualized its thesis with Horizon 2D-3D, a new UI that smoothly transitions
between the formats. The elegance of Horizon integrated into a map program is
immediately evident. A 45-second video demo shows a man walking through the
Swedish city of Malmö, checking a map on his HTC phone.

As he changes the screen angle by raising the phone, the map morphs seamlessly
from a 2D illustration to an actual 3D image of the city. Landmarks are
identified on a touch-activated menu, the man brings up the location of a
restaurant and walks on.

The application makes so much sense it seems destined for ubiquity. And Horizon
2D-3D isn’t limited to maps, but can be used with almost any application,
including lists, gaming, searching, even switching between files.

“Avatar” and 3DTV may have launched the format wave, but the thinkers writing
software are the ones who will plumb its potential. Sometimes it takes an
Astonishing Tribe, indeed.